“The corollary to the quote for which I’m famous for reads thus: though doubt was ever the enemy of strength, it is a frail strength that cannot withstand it.” - Aamod Gharsanja, Defender of Ambarsar, founder of the Steel Kipran

“Are you ready?! Then”- the sheet of red light swam like a whale, its flippers trailing corrosive sparks with each motion and the ceiling of the cell cratered.

“I’m ready when I’m ready,” declared Isla, interrupting the trigger-happy sub-routine.

The square-pupiled lenses of her helmet rotated with an audible whirr. She tilted her head.

Light wreathed her skull. She had shaved her hair off. Brown eyes moved over Martin’s despondent form.

“What the fuck did they do to you?”

“I’m fine.”

“Remove the helmet.”

Stale, reformulated air swept him by as he inhaled. He knew it was bad. Isla’s brow furrowed and her lips became a thin line.

“You’re not fine.”

Martin wheeled around, profile to Calix.”I’m fine, I told you.” It rang hollow, even to him.

“She screamed, you know.”

A glance.

“First person I fought here, in of these shitty cells. Had her by the throat and all.”

Her stare was hooded, an afternoon without end.

“But she wouldn’t give up. And I have come too far, done things I’m not fucking proud over, to hesitate.”

And so, despite his better judgement - if you could call it that - he asked.

“I snapped her neck.”

Martin startled. He stared into those hard, brown eyes.

“I,” Isla Calix said,”will not doubt our cause.” The hair on Martin’s arms stood at attention. Even though his shoulders dropped, and his lids carried the weight of tons, some feature in the way Calix stood demanded attention.

“Every day I doubt myself. I doubt if I will be strong enough, or if I will pass the Tutelage, or if the Administrator was wrong to pick me. And because of that doubt, I push myself, so that I might be ready when the day comes. When the Sovereigns come for the arcology, they’ll be feeling the edge of that doubt.”

She had told him, hadn’t she? That one day she would be another Sage, another Aamod Gharsanja.

“I snap the necks of little swans, because we need to be hard when the killing begins.”

Anything goes, just like Sviratham had told him.

And just like that, she had lost him.

“No!”

She stared at him, conveying a sense of flint. Martin Solieri’s lesson and Isla Calix’s lesson differed. Both had faced a choice, and in the road taken, diverged.

“We should strive for more. War on the Host, yes, but not on on other people, lest we confuse who the real enemy is.”

Calix shook her head.”You are being naive.” Frustration was writ large on her face.”How are we suppose to sharpen our knives, if not on others…!”

She closed her eyes.

“You told me you were a provincial.In Camp Sala, who rules?”

“The Bureau of Administration.”

“Oh please, you don’t believe that. I asked you, who rules?”

“…the crime bosses,” he responded, a hunch forming.

“The crime lords. And,” now her Trade thickened, the lisping accents of her native language showing,”how do you think they reached those positions? How, even in my own Bilbao Arcology, do they persist, purge after purge?”

“Because they’re not worth the hassle. Because we’ve got bigger fish to fry.”

“Because they’re the last people standing. Which we will be when we kill the Sixteen!”

An echo of the bar, with Andreas and Sara.

“You’re not even from a camp!”

Martin closed his eyes, too.

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He was losing the argument and he didn’t know why. No, he knew, didn’t he? He didn’t have the words to sway Isla, and she was wrong, but he couldn’t make her see.

The helmet of cloth reappeared on his face, hiding his frustration.

He stared into the alien gaze of one who was a stranger in more ways than one.

“I wish I could make you understand.”

“I do understand, Martin. That’s the problem.”

There was no announcer to declare a beginning of their fight. A sea of red light surged Martin by, its front leaving him unharmed.

He blinked, finding himself in the center of a storm, a clear oval in an otherwise red world.

Movement. He craned his head. Flicker. Wheeled around. Somchai’s offensive had been a clear physical thing, invisibility lending him an edge. Somaronov’s tactics employed a psychological dimension. Isla…no, Calix. She wasn’t Isla now. She was Calix to him. A surname, an enemy.

He raised a hand, imagining a sphere of fire. The ball manifested few centimeters of over his palm. The red sea was doing something to her movements. Adding speed. But not like Somchai. This was a steady thing.

There! He lobbed the sphere at her vanishing form-

-and the comet roared through the air, scattering, diminishing to nothing before winking out, less than two metres from him. Inside the red border.

That…was not what he had expected. The Field expenditure…clever. Calix used her Field to give herself a slight advantage, and to blunt her enemies’ attacks. It wasn’t an overwhelming tactic, but rather one with few strengths and comparatively few weaknesses too. It wouldn’t tax her Field too much either.

They were in for the long haul then.

Martin focused his Field, imagining heat, the air moving, distorting, protecting him. The effect on the air within a arm’s length was instant, but he knew it would take longer time to build a proper defense, unless he was willing to sacrifice Field. A Proxy, he had learned, could manipulate the the rules of the world, not break them outright.

A layered defence then, an onion of many levels. A cage of lightning spun into being, clear actinic veins seen against an environ that had begun to haze over.

Martin’s head rocketed back. He-no, maintain your focus! He blew air through his cheeks, willing the air to burn even hotter.

His left knee touched ground, jarring him but not without a vein of lightning clipping her as she blurred away. Come closer then, Calix. He willed his Field to focus on his defense, not his body. A burning knee was nothing to what Somaronov had done to him.

“Guh.”

He wheeled around in profile, torso smarting from a blow that left an indentation on his Chassis. Calix stood before him, her red Chassis blending in with the red light. Was she favouring her left side?

More. The air shook and quaked. The lightning writhed, thick tentacles dancing to conviction.

His head arced up - gods, she really wasn’t holding back was she — down — that was a heel - and a shove that would have sent him flying if he hadn’t willed himself not to.

He didn’t want to fight Calix. He didn’t want to lose to Calix. Did want do to her, what he had done to Somchai; what Somaronov had done to him. He persisted.

Through a curtain of mucus-textured air and with a head that was beginning to feel light, blows rained. They rendered him red and puffy but Martin would hoard his victory. In a sense, he thought, he wasn’t running. He was standing firm, true to his resolution.

His Field fluctuated around him as the three concurrent effects warped reality. Yet, a part of him knew. Calix was attacking; he was defending. The writing on the wall spoke volumes.

It came to a predictable halt after a subjective eternity. He could see through his Field, which was as thin as gossamer. The…his head was tender, like butchered meat. He’d give Calix her due: she had claimed no doubts and her fists had born out that threat.

He got up on one leg.

Calix paused.

“I,” Martin Solieri announced,”surrender.” He didn’t say what he surrendered. Some things were better off unsaid.

“By unanimous decision: the winner is Isla Calix!”

Martin fell. It’s okay. I surrendered. His leg, the good leg, the leg not broken twice in fights, wobbled and strained. He stared at Calix’s Chassis, the head of which was angled, one foot raised above ground.

The red dome was still up.

Her naked face was the last thing Martin saw as a fractal-snowflake-gate whisked him away. Her mouth was pursed, two roads cracked together in an earthquake. In her eyes he saw himself. On ground. She stood above him. Victorious. So why did it feel like he had won?

***

“You’re fine.”

“Do you often get patients that aren’t…fine?”

Doctor Abban slapped Martin on his knee.

”Ow!”

“You’d be screaming if you weren’t fine.”

Martin lay his head on the white pillow. Why were hospitals, infirmaries always so white? They made him stand out, always. His skin looked sallow, washed of its rich tones.

At least the doctor’s skin had the same look.

He rotated his head, dreads bunching up. Maybe I should take a page from Calix’s book and just shave it away.

A row of five to his left. Another row before him, continuing on the left.

On his left row, two beds removed, there was a door through which some of the survivors from Class 2095-13 issued forth.

“Ten minutes more, and the knee will be good.” The doctor palmed a cigar, manifesting a metallic gauntlet on the opposite hand and raised a flaming finger.

“Ah.”

“Doesn’t those give you cancer?”

“I have tried to quit hitting patients, but I guess I’ll make an exception for you.”

Martin shut his mouth. You really didn’t want to anger someone with intimate knowledge of your injuries. They knew were to leave bruises.

Abban blew a black cloud that enveloped Martin’s head, obscuring his vision. He inhaled the noxious fume…these are narcotics!

Martin knew his wares as any seller must do. That cigar weren’t just the average stuff he’d sell Two:ers and Three:ers.

It has to be Grade 6, perhaps 7. Martin waved the black cloud away.

“I have set you an appointment,” Abban murmured, staring at the ceiling. It was smudged. Gods, how often does he smoke that stuff?

“For what?”

Abban’s head swung down. Their eyes met, and there was something familiar in them. You have your shadows too, don’t you?

“Take this.” A metallic card landed on Martin’s chest.

“Wait, an appointment for what?”

“The adress is on the back.”

Abban made to leave, still smoking a cigar that would see him indentured to front-service for a decade, halting only momentarily on his way out.”The dreams you have? About that Regial? They’re not going to go away on their own.”

“Wait, you can’t just-“ the door swung shut.

“Well, apparently he can,” a voice some distance away said.

Martin knew that voice.

“Somchai, that you?”

“In the flesh, modestly attired, painfully make up-less and looking for company.”

It shouldn’t have made him smile, but all the same, it did. Martin pulled himself up, spotting the bed on the opposite row and to his right.

Somchai’s golden skin shone in the light, unlike his own. He pointed at his skull, the sides of which were shaved. “Good thing I got a haircut before the Tutelage began, otherwise that dent you gave me would have ruined my good looks.”

Martin’s throat bobbed.”I’m sorry.”

Somchai had a screen up, staring intently at it. He paused, looking up in a distracted manner. “Whatever for?”

Martin paused. Somchai had no visible wounds. But just as with his knee, the doctor wouldn't let Somchai go if he was injured. Probably.

“The…”

“The arm? The head? You needn’t. I’m used to worse,” came an almost absent reply.

Before Martin had time to properly digest that statement, Saolirin pushed a button on the screen, placed a palm on its surface and threw a image into the air.

A…”What are we looking at here?”

Somchai pulled a hand through the strands of hair that began on a parallel to his brows, the arc of which terminated at ear-height.”Oh dear.”

He grabbed both hands and rotated the image.

It looked little better.

Again it spun.

“Ah.”

Martin was staring at the tree Sviratham had created at the end of the introduction to the Tutelage. The ‘crown’ was occupied by Viktor Solzhenitsyn.

Last, dead last, was Cameron Westerfield. Hadn’t he been first?

“What happened?”

“I’m trying to find out. Stupid Administrator…I’m not trying to hack senior personnel files…I just want to see…”

The ‘space’ that the tree occupied fuzzed, becoming an oval. It revealed a battle cell from above, like one Martin had just vacated.

Cameron Westerfield, with his infamous patch looked at Berenice Sonnentag.

“…why?”

Westerfield’s voice trailed off in the recording.

Berenice stood resolute. Martin could make out a tremor in her left foot, yet there she stood.

“Because there is nothing to gain fighting other Proxies. The foundation of your argument is that this…contest, it will sharpen our abilities for the inevitable showdown with the Host. But deviathans, the spearhoners, the mechaloids, and the Regials both High and Low, they don’t fight like humans do.”

The words struck a chord with Martin.

The perspective of the oval changed, zeroing in on Westerfield’s face. He looked…serene. The bent of his lips were turned up at the corners. There was a peace in his sole grey eye that made Martin Solieri shiver.

“And so I surrender.”

Westerfield teleported away in a burst of sparks, unheeding and uncaring about whatever else might be said of his actions.

Martin Solieri threw his head back and laughed. The tension, the worry, the close but-not question he had carried for three fights hadn’t gone away with those four words, not entirely, but it was eased now.

I’m not alone.